


you carry my heart (and guide me home)

by kotaface (aveyune23)



Series: Cloti Fall Festival 2020 [1]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020), Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
Genre: A sprinkle of angst for flavor, An Ode to Tifa's Hands, Cloti Fall Festival 2020, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, F/M, Romance, in which Cloud reflects on what Tifa's hands mean to him, unbeta'd because i like to live dangerously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:34:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27561589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aveyune23/pseuds/kotaface
Summary: Of all the things he loves about her, he loves her hands the most.
Relationships: Tifa Lockhart/Cloud Strife
Series: Cloti Fall Festival 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2014588
Comments: 24
Kudos: 68
Collections: CloTi Fall Festival 2020 (ClotiWeek)





	you carry my heart (and guide me home)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Cloti Fall Festival 2020, Day One: _Tender Feelings & Resilience_

**_“You saved me / from the dangers of my mind. / Your hand was the only one / that could reach me.”_ ** **~ F.S. Yousaf**

Of all the things he loves about Tifa, he loves her hands the most. 

Her hands are beautiful — slender and fine-boned and graceful — but there’s more to them than that. 

Her hands can dance across the keys of a piano and wield a chef’s knife with equal expertise. The fingers that painlessly untangle Marlene’s bird-nest hair are the same ones that attack the knots in his shoulders without mercy. Her hands knead bread and patch clothes and tally up expenses in small, neat writing.

Tifa’s hands are deadly — she could take out an entire army with only her fists. He knows, because he’s seen her do it.

Tifa’s hands are delicate — more than once she’s had to stitch him or their friends back together after a fight.

Her hands are her livelihood, and she’s proud of them. She takes care to keep them clean, her nails trimmed and shaped and sometimes painted, and every night after the bar closes, she covers them in lotion to prevent her skin from cracking. The calluses and faded scars are a testament to a life of hard work and discipline; each one is a star that he’s put into patterns and memorized, the way sailors used to learn the constellations so that they could find their way home.

Her hands speak volumes. They give her away when she’d rather stay silent; it’s easy to decipher anxiety from fidgeting fingers and exhaustion from palms that support her head like pillars. And when she struggles to find words, she lets her hands do the talking — generous and gentle, greedy and grasping.

He loves her hands because she does so much good with them. She creates community through warm food and cold beer and sometimes music, if patrons plead loud enough. Denzel and Marlene never hesitate to seek her out when they need things only mother-hands can do, like dry tears or patch scraped knees. Her hands have saved the world more than once, and they helped rebuild after.

He loves her hands because they’ve saved him, too.

They have blocked and countered blows that were meant for him with lightning-quick punches and sharp jabs. They’ve snatched him back from crumbling ledges and shoved him out of harm’s way. And every time he falls, she’s always there to catch him. 

Tifa’s hands have saved him in every way a person can be saved.

When he was half-dead and lying in a gutter, she pulled him to his feet and all but carried him home.

When his head split in two from memories that weren’t always his, she held him steady until they passed.

When he shattered into a million tiny pieces, she reached out with both hands and put him back together.

Her hands were a balm for the chaos in his head. She kept him whole when he wasn’t sure he was human.

They’re fierce, too, when they need to be. When his doubt and guilt turned inward, when he gave up, she wasn’t afraid to smack some sense into him. Her palm had struck the mattress that day, but it might as well have landed upside his head. It had sent him reeling. It had rescued him.

Tifa’s hands are resilient. They never shy away from fighting for what she knows is right, for what’s important, for what she holds dear.

Tifa’s hands are tender. The caress of her fingertips is a benediction; her palm over his heart, an absolution.

Her hands are a tether to the present. They show him every day that he is loved, that he is wanted, that he is enough.

Cloud loves her hands because once upon a time, she reached into his ribcage and plucked his heart from his chest and replaced it with her own. She cradled it, protected it, cherished it, and when he was lost, she used it like a map to find him. She took his hands in hers and led him out of the dark.

She saves him every day. She reminds him that he deserves it whenever he doubts.

He kisses her hands every day in gratitude, presses his lips to the tip of each finger, to her knuckles, to her palms, to each constellation he’s mapped in his mind, whispering  _ thank you thank you thank you. _

Tifa’s hands are his home.


End file.
